Don't Blame The Doctor. He Did Not Give You Cancer. He Gave You a Diagnosis.

 

I don't want to make this mostly about Ann Althouse.  But she is the trigger.  I can make a more general point, though.  In the ridiculous argument she makes above? She is showing a particularly fucked up way of looking at the world.  To rephrase it, she is arguing the problem is not delusional people.  But it is the people reporting  about the delusional people who are the problem.

She calls them evil.  Now I could cheap shot her and say her lack of a solid moral compass is showing.  But like I said in the title.  She is blaming the reporter of bad news.  She is blaming the doctor for saying, sorry, you've got cancer.

It's not all that strange for people who live  partial if not greater delusional lives, to lash out at the people out there who burst their bubbles.  It is not a healthy way of going through life.  And I do not know the sum total of possible delusions she lives by.  But if she really thinks the problem is the reporters, not what bad news they are reporting?  She really needs to be "recalibrated,"  Not that my saying so has any weight.

Now to the matter of the ridiculousness of what she says about what to do about election denialism.  Not exclusive to that issue.  But the people who study this shit, most if not near all with proper credential as experience agree.  

When someone locks in on a political (or cultural, or otherwise social) opinion.  The odds of changing their mind is really low.  And the more you try to change their mind, the more they lock in.

Talk about a delusion!  Believing you can convince people who are locked in on a delusional belief, that they are wrong.

Like I said. A recalibration is called for here. 

Edit to add:   She doesn't give her usual remedy here.  But she is an adherent of what I dismissively slam as the Cult of Free Speech.  She loves to say  the way to respond to bad speech is more speech!

Delusional.  That is what the experts say.  I refer to them above.  I am no terribly old, but I am old and experienced enough with out the back stop of the expert researchers to tell me.  Don't fucking bother.  The delusional person might be suffering from an advanced case of Dunning-Kruger.  But you are delusional if you think you can change their mind.